Here's my different version of the falls which Todd also recently depicted in an earlier post. I was there a little less than two weeks ago. The colors of the grasses and brush around the falls had yet to green up and were uninspiring to say the least so I shot this with black and white in mind. However the windy conditions during my visit were really agitating the spray from the falls. Added to the somewhat low angle of the mid-morning sun a nice rainbow was forming. I thought it would be a shame to lose the rainbow in the conversion to grayscale so I tried to isolate it and keep it in color. This is the result of combining a few exposures to get the entire rainbow and for a wide dynamic range of the rest of the scene. Thanks for viewing.
Well, I'm gonna be contrary here. This is a beautiful image, WITHOUT the rainbow. I get where you were going with this, but the rainbow is such a powerful draw on the eye that I think it overwhelms the rest of the image. I thought at first it was a watermark. I think this is a wonderful shot and can stand on its own without the rainbow.
I'm generally not a fan of selective color/bw (whatever the name for this technique is) in images. And I'm with Paul on this one, I love the bw conversion and the incredible energy in the falls but the rainbow kind of makes it look fake.
Nice B&W conversion and I can see why you would want to bring back the colors in the rainbow. However, I have to agree with Aleks in that the rainbow looks fake.
I had a feeling this one would elicit some love/hate responses (I agree mixed color/b&w images inevitably seem to look unnatural). This shot will probably never be among my favorites due to the drabness of the full-color version or the near disappearance of the rainbow in the full b&w. It was at least a fun experiment...On to the next. Thanks all for your responses.
Discussion
10 repliesJust keep the dang thing in color!